Salif Keïta

A big band from Berlin, the Omniversal Earkestra project, discovers records by big bands from the Republic of Mali from the 1960s and 70s, when there was an explosive music scene right after the country’s independence. Fascinated by the sound — which combines Dogon, Wassalou or Tuareg traditions with Cuban influences — they embark on a journey to meet the veteran legends who originated the movement, such as Cheick Tidiane Seck, Abdoulaye Diabaté or Salif Keita.

The Network Media Cooperative (Network Medien-Cooperative) was founded in October 1979 – by April 1990 we had already issued 19 titles, at the time as audio-cassettes with a comprehensive booklet in a small package that looked like a chocolate box. The covers and layouts were produced using Letraset on a light-table installed over a bath tub. Among those first records were the musical themes that were to preoccupy us for 30 years: an extensive document of the “Gypsies Music Festival”; meanwhile the music of the Roma has been documented on numerous Network CDs, including the anthology “Road of the Gypsies” (often copied but never achieving the same level). A double musíccasette packet was devoted to cult music from Haiti and the sounds and life philosophy of the Rastafarians in Jamaica. Recording trips were undertaken, among others, to Cuba, Trinidad, St. Lucia, and Curacao, but also to Latin America, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Belize. We also approached the music worlds of Africa in our portrait of the South African pianist and vocalist Dollar Brand (today Abdullah Ibrahim) and in the first studio recordings of Soukous music. These were followed by trips to Liberia, Senegal, Mali, Tanzania, Zanzibar.

Osunlade was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. He composed music for Sesame Street during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Afterwards he moved to Los Angeles, California, where he worked with artists such as Patti Labelle and Freddie Jackson. After a stint there, he moved to New York, where he founded Yoruba Records. To date he has worked with such artists as Roy Ayers, Nkemdi, Salif Keita, and Cesaria Evora…

The 20 years referred to in the title of this 2CD collection is only the length of the Bombay-born percussionist's solo career. Gurtu was already beginning to play Indian classical tabla at the age of six, eventually opening his jazz-fusion phase by gigging with Oregon and Don Cherry. This set's subtitle blurb reads 'the serial collaborator in full flight with…', then proceeds to list a highly impressive gathering of guest artists, hailing from both jazz and global music zones. There's always the danger, particularly with drumming leaders, to be subsumed and sidelined by your singers, guitarists and horn players, but Trilok always invites his collaborators into his own universe, retaining a strong sense of Indian classical tradition. Often this will be pleasingly filtered via a fusion with jazz, funk, soul, hip hop, African, Latin, Far Eastern or Western classical musics, but Gurtu usually tends to emerge unscathed and undiluted.

Alain Mallet is a veteran pianist who has been working with artists like Paul Simon, Phil Woods and others for over 25 years. Just a few short years ago, he finally decided to record his first album as a leader. Alain lists a diverse group of influences at work here, including Miles Davis, Peter Gabriel, Rachmaninov, Stevie Wonder, Salif Keita and others, and all that diversity shows through in his music. For example, opening track, “Till I Dance (In Your Arms Again)” opens with a Middle Eastern flavor, before there is a shift and the bands kicks into a Latin American rhythm in 5/4 time. Its this sort of mixing influences from all over the world that best describes the music on “Mutt Slang”, as different sections of tracks may take us to Africa, Israel, Latin America or some imaginative places that don’t quite exist outside the musical realm…